Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!uupsi!sugar!peter
From: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva)
Subject: Re: The 68050 - end of the 680x0? (was Re: The Amiga's Future)
Message-ID: <1991Jun16.164037.22349@sugar.hackercorp.com>
Organization: Sugar Land Unix -- Houston, TX
References: <1991Jun10.072945.8821@neon.Stanford.EDU> <22365@cbmvax.commodore.com> <1135@stewart.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1991 16:40:37 GMT

In article <1135@stewart.UUCP> jerry@stewart.UUCP (Jerry Shekhel) writes:
> Show me how the '486 is braindead, Dave.  Show me that you can do more,
> Dave, than post the same old ignorant Amigoid ramblings full of BS phrases
> like "braindead".

Well, I wouldn't call the 486 (or even the 386) braindead. I'd call them
crippled, though. Even the 68000 family is short of GP registers for a '90s
processor, and the 386/486 only has like 3-4 what you could call "general
purpose" registers.

This doesn't show up in benchmarks, generally, because they are usally either
simple algorithms that don't need many registers, or feindishly complex ones
that hurt the 68000 nearly as badly. But I'm sure that algorithms like BitBlt
on the 386/486 require a lot of register juggling.

Of course, as 90% of the 386/486 processors in the world are used, they're
just faster 8088s. That *is* crippling.
-- 
Peter da Silva.   `-_-'   <peter@sugar.neosoft.com>.
                   'U`    "Have you hugged your wolf today?"